Sense
by Winter M
Summary: A little contemplation on Xander's part several months after the events of The Gift.


Title: Sense

Author: Winter M.

Rating: PG

Pairing: none really

Spoilers: The Gift

Feedback: yes please!

Archive: Watermark, everyone else just ask!

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. I'm just a poor broke student who needs to get away from her computer more.

Summary: A little contemplation on Xander's part several months after the events of The Gift.

- - - -

The vampire jerked away from the sting of iodine, making the young man attending to his wound wince slightly. Xander's hand tightened on the bicep under his fingers, silently telling the blonde to keep still, too tired and annoyed to verbally rebuke Spike. Another few dabs at the scarlet slashes running from shoulder almost to the waistband of faded black denim jeans earned him a painful hiss for his efforts.

"Bloody hell! It'd be fine if you would stop messing with it already. Just let me feed and it'll heal on its own."

He stubbornly ignored the words, focusing instead on the tone, "We said we were sorry." And that _so_ did not make him sound like a six year old apologizing for breaking another's favorite color crayon.

A soft growl was the closest thing to an answer he got and Xander quickly moved onto taping and bandaging up the wounds in white gauze. His fingers moved with a startling efficiently, unsettling because of what it implied about the type of life he lead. Soon they were finished, Spike up and out of the chair with a grimace. He could hear the vampire rooting through the top shelf of his refrigerator as he carefully repacked the economic sized first aid kit and set it aside. Another minute and the microwave come on with a low thrum and a beep as it was set.

He stood, leaning back against the dining room table to watch Spike's jerky movements as he took the heated blood and drank it down in long swallows; finished another little packet of blood was slit open and dumped into the ceramic. It went into the microwave the process repeated itself. This time the blonde wrapped both hands around the mug and taking the time to drink down its contents more slowly, seemingly savoring the slick glide of warmth down his cool throat.

"Look, it was an emergency. The thing had started to rampage through downtown, there wasn't time to go searching for you." A baleful blue gaze met his but he stood fast, "Besides it didn't look _that_ big in the picture!" Was it his fault the author hadn't included a scale along with all the other seemingly useful information they had found? Spike just glared at him and turned back to his mug of warm blood and Xander sighed softly, turning away and going into the apartment's tiny living room. He sank down on the sofa and closed his eyes against the bright white overhead lights.

That evening an hour or so after sunset the 'bot had arrived back at the Magic Box and informed them of finding several severally mangled bodies scattered around near the University campus. A number of unique damage patterns described had led to a quick search through the books until they had stumbled upon the reference to Ty'Licsou demons who appeared partial to using their wicked claws to cut open their victims and then feasting upon the intestines. Aside from its claw however, they did not seem otherwise intimidating and several townspeople running down the street screaming had decided it for them. They had rushed out of the shop and in the direction the bot had run into the thickest patch of bodies.

There hadn't been enough time to find the vampire who had slipped out of the shop as soon as the sun set. As it was, by the time they found the creature it had already begun to act out its bloody carnage, tearing into the students and other residents idiotically out for a late night stroll. The group had turned to dispatching the demon but were quite unprepared for the sheer size of the creature, eight feet high at least and another 6 or so across; it was covered in a dense hide of scabby skin, its limbs were long and corded with inhuman muscle while its hands were adorned with the notorious claws. A few lines from a book didn't quite prepare one for the site of those razor sharp appendages nor the creature who wielded them.

Still, considering they were severally outclassed the rag tag group of scoobies were able to mostly hold their own against the creature, for about the first fifteen minutes. After that they had begun to tire and that made them sloppy. Lucky for them the bleach blonde vampire had arrived then on his patrol route and been able to dispatch the creature, just not before receiving a nasty swipe from the demon's massive paw. Underlying the snark and sharp tongue Xander could tell Spike was in a great deal of pain and, feeling a great deal grateful for the other's timely violent intercession, he had drug the bleeding vampire back to his apartment and set to cleaning up the wounds.

The gashes weren't as bad as they might have been considering but they had bled out in thick dart trails, soaking the black t-shit clinging to the cold damp skin. Xander had expected the blonde's sharp tongue to come into play on the way home, verbally chewing them out for almost getting themselves made into bacon strips by the local populace. Instead he had remained unnaturally quiet, until they got to the actual bandaging up of wounds; even then it had been restricted to soft snarls and sub-vocal growls as he wiped up the excess blood and set to work cleaning out the jagged edges left by the claws.

The second mug was finished and Spike paused, staring intensely at the emergency stash of blood housed in Xander's refrigerator before finally shrugging slightly to himself and pulling out a third packet to heat. The microwave pinged and he wandered into the living room, slouching carefully down onto the sofa next the brunette, mug carefully cradled in his hands. They sat in silence for a long while, just letting the peace seep into their bones, the night had been exhausting.

"Why do you stay? S'not as if you've got a lot to stick around for."

His eyes blinked open at the unexpected question, head rolling on the back of the couch so he could study the vampire, not entirely sure where he was going with this, "Why do you?"

Spike doggedly refused to meet his eyes, glancing slightly and focusing on a patch of carpet across the room.

"If we're gonna talk about motivation, you sure have a whole lot less then me."

The slender shoulders tensed, muscles coiling like steel beneath the soft pale skin, "if that's what you still think then never mind." He stood jerkily and turned to go back into the kitchen.

Xander sat up a little straighter on the sofa, actually taking the energy needed to pull his head up on his neck, he reached out a hand to stop the other man, "That's not what I meant, I just—making a point here, and not going well is it?" his hand was shrugged off and the vampire left. The sound of water running reached his ears a few minutes later, then the opening and closing of his dishwasher. It made him stop for a moment, when had Spike started bothering to do his own bloody dishes? Around the same time he started volunteering to patrol with them or entertain Dawn or any other number of little things to help after—

He stood up from the couch and went into the kitchen, leaning on the counter next to the white knuckled hands gripping the tiled countertop. He lightly touched a shoulder, "Hey—"

"You don't get it do you?" the blonde turned to him with a mild sneer, "I'm not 'sposed to care about you lot! The Bit that's—that's different and it sure has hell doesn't explain the rest."

He couldn't help a slight flinch at the bitter tone, the confusion Spike was so desperately trying to hide, not just from them but himself as well. He wasn't sure what to say in the face of such emotion from the supposedly evil soulless vampire, and wasn't that something of a laugh in and of itself? His thoughts were broken by a soft disgusted snort and Spike was pushing away from the counter, grabbing his tattered shirt off the dining room table and starring at it morosely, finally just pulling it on over his hair and grabbing the black duster draped over a chair; then he was gone, fleeing out the apartment door with nary a backward glance, the door slamming slightly on its hinges in his wake.

It felt like he was missing something important here, he wasn't sure that all the pieces of this little puzzle were there but even so he couldn't shake the feeling that nevertheless he should be able to pick apart what the heck was going on. He knew it wasn't brain surgery or physics, no it was emotions and subtleties; he might have had better luck at the brain surgery then trying to unravel this ball of yarn he felt had been shoved into his hands. And god knows it was better for the world that Willow had never tried to teach him how to knit, though maybe it would have helped him now.

Xander sighed softly and slid slowly to the cold linoleum of his kitchen floor, leaning back against the cabinet doors. He could feel the last of his energy slowly dripping out of his body, splashing as it pooled near his feet. He hadn't meant to run the vampire off, far from it. They had actually come to a sort of understanding, a sort of friendship over the last couple of months. It was hard, hard on all of them this life they lead now; but they survived, kept on fighting though sometimes it wasn't easy.

All the same, it was draining the life out of all of them, it was the reason Anya had left him the week before; finally overcome by the fact of her own mortality. He couldn't blame her running from this pitiful little town to which all the evil seemed to be drawn. No one should have to live this life, except there are some who must for the sake of everyone else. He hoped Buffy was happy wherever she was now; she deserved it after everything she sacrificed in this life. Because, no matter what Wills said he just couldn't believe that the tiny blonde slayer had been sent to hell.

The minutes slipped slowly by and his brain slowly turned over what the vampire had said. It didn't make sense, none of it made sense. The blonde's sticking around after the Tower, hell, his sticking around _for_ the Tower. He had always firmly stood on the side of soulless equals no feelings outside of rage and bloodlust; but that just didn't seem to hold up anymore in the harsh light of day. The vampire stuck around of his own accord, patrolling, helping take care of Dawn, even researching when the occasion was desperate enough. He was taking care of all of them in a quiet, behind the scenes kind of way.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, eyes closed in exhaustion when the door flew back open and the black clad vampire stomped back into his apartment. He glanced up slowly, eyes focusing hazily on the blank faced figure. He stayed where was when the blonde kneeled down in front of him on the cold hard linoleum, already he could see that the gashes were healing through the torn shirt Spike hadn't abandoned yet. The touch of cool fingers ghosting over his skin, though unexpected, was not nearly as awful as one would believe it to be, being touched by a dead man. Spike's breath was cool and it came out in small puff across is face when he spoke.

"You and your chums don't do that again, understand luv? I won't loose you… any of you."

Xander nodded slowly, a little numbed by the soft heartbreaking tone. It didn't make sense. A creature like this was not supposed to care about humans; they were to be looked upon as food and nothing more. Even with the chip in good working order, all it did was punish the vampire from acting out against living creatures, it didn't nor couldn't change his very inherent nature. You could try to do the math, line up all the columns of numbers and add them together, but in the end he couldn't seem to find an answer which made sense for the equation. No matter how hard he searched his mind, recalling books and conversations, it just didn't coalesce into some semblance of order; starring into those startlingly blue blue eyes which reflected so much and tried to hide even more.

No, it didn't make sense, but when had anything about his life ever made sense?

END


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